155 Miles Per Hour (of Work)

It’s hard to feel pumped when your salary goes nowhere and gasoline costs more than $3 a gallon. But a new car would help.

Gas prices alone don’t determine how much pain you feel at the pump; it also depends on how much you earn. Using estimated average tax rates for the middle quintile of the population, an hour’s wages after federal taxes bought 6.3 gallons of gas last month. That is up 5.3% over the past two years.

But now imagine that you have taken advantage of low interest rates to finance a new car. According to research out of the University of Michigan, the average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the U.S. hit 24.8 miles per gallon in November, up from 23.1 two years before.

So in your new ride, your hour of toil now buys 155 miles on the open road—a healthier gain of 13% over the past two years.